The inescapable contribution of McDonald’s to national obesity

Obesity is a complex problem at the interface of genetics, biology, environment, economics, marketing, personal choice, and a multitude of other factors.

This is why it is unhelpful when critics often isolate one of those factors — personal choice — and put the onus for obesity exclusively on individuals. This afternoon, I encountered a photo illustration by the blogger Stephon Von Worley (see below) that plots out each of the 13,000 McDonald’s locations in the lower 48 states, and expertly demonstrates the hazardous environment in which millions of people are making daily nutritional decisions.

Seen from this illuminating perspective, the US looks like a nutritional mine-field, especially for those with less discretionary income, to whom the low cost/high-calorie tradeoff offered by McDonald’s and other fast food franchises is alluring. At each of those shimmering plot points, literal tons of greasy food are being handed over day after day to people who have been drawn there by familiarity, comfort, necessity, and tens of millions of dollars of clever marketing.

As someone concerned about the impact of lifelong nutrition on cognitive health, this gives me great pause.

Over the past several years, we have watched filmmakers depict the ”Supersize Me” culture in the US, read exposes of our “Fast Food Nation”, and listened to nutritional scholars talk about “obesegenic environments” that are contributing to the obesity epidemic. So far, this picture is the most disqueiting representation of why our culture has such an intractable problem on its hands.

Comments

And every one of those 13,000 McDonald’s restaurants sells salads. If Americans don’t order salads then the obesity problem is not McDonald’s problem, it’s people’s problem. That makes it a tougher problem to solve. That makes it a different problem [COMMENT EDITED]

hi Scott, thanks for the semi-constructive comment – you can leave the vitriol at the door because it’s not in keeping with the culture of our community.

I have acknowledged that obesity is a complex issue and that personal choice is inextricably part of the equation. But perspectives like yours ignore the other factors I reference (marketing, affordability of high calorie/low nutrition foods, genetics, etc) and, in the face of such a complex problem, are ultimately not very helpful.

You mention salads…I’d love it if you could find data on how much money is spent marketing the healthier foods at McD versus money spent on less nutritious staples (burgers, fries, desserts, etc).